


Together Wing to Wing

by brianmay_be



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Nightmares, Tenderness, Whump, i made Damon out to be a horrible father sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29161200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brianmay_be/pseuds/brianmay_be
Summary: “Of course,” he said easily, like he had when they made their unlucky arrangement. If reading her favorite book meant sticking around for longer than the duration of this hospital stay, of course. Of course he would.or;He's offered his protection before, on the Green. In the hospital, Cee wonders if he'll offer it again, and Ezra wonders if she'll even want him to.
Relationships: Cee & Ezra (Prospect 2018)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Two such as you with such a master speed  
>  Cannot be parted nor be swept away  
> From one another once you are agreed  
> That life is only life forevermore  
> Together wing to wing and oar to oar._
> 
> \- The Master Speed by Robert Frost

He’d imagined healing would be painful. Exhausting, maybe, and likely bothersome. Restrictive. But never this damn  _ noisy. _

The Green was a lot of things, but one thing it wasn’t was  _ noisy. _ Quiet came as naturally to the tangled forest as the dust, hung heavy in every branch and twisted into every blade of grass. Nothing could live on the Green that wasn’t as mean as the air it breathed, and in Ezra’s experience, nothing mean was ever partial to singing. No birds, no crickets, no creeks that hadn’t been choked up with dust so burdensome it seemed like the water could barely move. Just the quiet, and your own mind to fill up the space in between.

The hospital, on the other hand - he’d never been more beleaguered with needless noise that he had been these past few cycles. The monitors, the doctors, the alarms - even his own  _ breathing _ was noisy. It rattled in his chest like a broken thing, wheezy and prone to bouts of coughing that left him bone-tired. He slept, but only when his exhaustion surpassed his irritation at the cacophony. He’d thought he would welcome the sound of people, of civilization. Not once had it occurred to him that it would wear on him so deeply, not after so many cycles with naught to listen to but the hum of the filter and his own inane rambling.

He’d been more reserved than usual on that front. It seemed his body had had enough of his loquaciousness, at least for the time being, and insisted on dredging up uncomfortable ills whenever he tried to speak for more than a sentence or two. He was too damn tired, and his lungs hurt too badly with the treatments the doctors kept giving him to clean out the dust. He settled for silence; and, for the first time in a long time, he  _ listened. _

She was as bright as the ruby’s blaze, that one. Smarter than anyone he’d kept company with in a long time, and more vibrant than he could recall being in many, many years. He’d seen some of that fire in her on the Green, when she talked of her favorite novel and confided how she wrote her own stories. He was captivated by it now, charmed by her youthful innocence and struck, as he had been even in their first unhappy encounter, by her pluck and intelligence. 

She was telling him about  _ The Streamer Girl, _ and the sound of her voice soothed all the other noises to a dull racket as he tried to follow the twist and turns of her excited chatter.

“Clo doesn’t even  _ like  _ Reive in the beginning - she thinks Reive is a know-it-all, and she is, kind of, but what Clo  _ doesn’t  _ know is that Reive has been the one covering for her when all the professors think she’s skipping class.”

Ezra rubbed a hand over his chest to ease the urge to cough that never seemed to fade completely these days. _ “Isn’t _ she skipping class?”

“I mean, yeah,” she conceded. “But not to slack off, or anything. She’s fighting the - ”

She cut herself off, and Ezra quirked a brow when she didn’t continue. She gave him a little smile, just this side of teasing.

“I shouldn’t say. I don’t want to spoil it for you.”

He hummed in agreement. “Kind of you, birdie.”

He watched as she ran her fingers over the front cover of her well-loved notebook, tapping the beat to a song only she could hear. She looked tired, and he made a note to attempt to steer her towards a good, long rest if the opportunity arose.

“Ezra?”

“Hm?”

She worried her bottom lip; she’d done it so often these past cycles he was surprised it didn’t bleed.

“You will read it, won’t you?”

He watched her expression carefully. He was no authority on teenage diction, but he felt there was likely more she was asking with that question than it seemed at first blush.

“Of course,” he said easily, like he had when they made their unlucky arrangement. If reading her favorite book meant sticking around for longer than the duration of this hospital stay, of course. Of course he would.

Her expression eased, and he felt a measure of relief. She hid a yawn behind her sleeve and brushed her hair behind her ear.

“Maybe after you read it, you can help me write some of my book.”

He smiled. “I assure you, little bird - you would not be so keen for my writing talents if you knew how sorely lacking they are.”

She looked amused. “How can someone who talks as much as you do not know how to write?”

“Oh, speaking is a matter of decisiveness, birdie,” he explained. “No time to mull over what you say - only time to speak it, and see what it reaps.” 

That had been one too many words strung together for his body’s liking, and he obliged its need for a volley of coughs against his fist. He took a stilted breath when recovered and rested his arm over his wound, protective of the stitches that still burned when he moved.

“If I attempted to write... I would fret over every single word,” he said slowly. “I would be one sentence in by the time you’d moved on to another book entirely.”

That much he’d learned from his short-lived endeavor to journal in the early days of his prospecting career: better to speak when the words came easily and never revisit them. Better to let his thoughts come and go rather than record them when they were so frequently things of no true worth that habitually bore unfortunate consequences.

He nodded to her notebook. “I would like to read your book, though, after I read the original.”

She was pale enough with tiredness that her blush was bright pink on her cheeks.

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. The self-deprecation in her voice had likely been mastered at her father’s behest with his disinterested and contemptuous manner, and Ezra felt a streak of resentment towards the man that warred with his near constant guilt. He wondered how moral it was to be glad Cee would never endure Damon’s scorn again. 

“Best practice is to allow a man to decide for himself what he’d like and wouldn’t like,” he said. He bottled a cough in his chest. “Of course, if you’re of a mind to keep it for yourself, you’ll find no pressure from me to do otherwise.”

Her shoulders visibly relaxed and she opened up again, looking at him like she couldn't quite puzzle him out. She yawned again and she seemed so young to him, then; a tired little girl too world-weary for her own good.

“Try and get some shuteye, birdie,” he said. He tried to settle into a more comfortable position, but his stump had started to ache again; it was a dull pain, like a sick tooth, and evaded every attempt at soothing.

Her brow creased. “You’re hurting.”

He shook his head. “Just a little sore, is all. No use getting into a fluster.”

“I should get the doctor,” she said, and made to rise from her cot. He waved her down with an unsteady hand.

“Settle yourself, birdie,” he chided. “They’ll be in soon enough with appropriate remedy for my ills, and you’ll have lost no time...” He drew a wheezing breath. “Scampering up and down the hallways.”

She narrowed her eyes, unimpressed. “I don’t scamper.”

His chuckle was half-cough. “No? Stride with intention, then. Either way, you’re better off having a lie-down.”

She considered him for a moment, then curled up in her cot and tucked the blanket under her chin. He reached up to the panel behind him to turn the lights off, wincing a little as he did; the sun came through the heavy blind only enough to cast the room in a warm, dim glow. 

“Wake me when the doctor comes,” she said. Her voice was already heavy with sleep.

“Shh, birdie,” he soothed. “No more of your fretting. You try and sleep for... as long as you can.”

She’d proven adept at sleeping despite the noise, though he felt that was likely more the result of her exhaustion catching up to her than any real comfort in such a busy place. He watched as she succumbed to her fatigue, one hand tucked under her cheek, and was glad that at least one of them could sleep.

He rested his hand on his collarbone, tentatively pressing on the hollows of his too-thin frame. His ministrations did not improve his discomfort, but they offered something to do; he closed his eyes and listened to the noise, missing Cee’s voice in spite of himself.


	2. Chapter 2

The doctors came, and he asked them to be quiet.

They shot him full of something that made him tingly like the syrettes, but at least his wounds didn’t pain him so terribly. They checked his incisions and bandaged him again. They set him another breathing treatment before they left, and he tried not to cough himself into a spin with every inhale.

Cee didn’t wake, and he didn’t rouse her.

He rested back against the pillows, sore with all that coughing, his breaths still noisy but less painful. The sun had gone down, and the room was dark; the city lights of Central sparked outside the blinds like a sheet of frantic, trembling stars. He wondered idly if the people on Central had ever really _seen_ stars - not the dull pinpricks washed out by the city, but the magnificent jewels that covered dark nights on less populated planets, lights so bright up there in the blackness it seemed like they might come to life and start eating you whole. He could read the stars on the Green Moon as easily as he could read his own handwriting, and if he never saw them again it would be too soon.

If he was honest with himself - and he made it a point to engage in honest conversation, whenever feasible - he had never really thought he’d get off the Green. It would have been too much to ask of the life he’d so carelessly given over to violence at every opportunity. He deserved to die on the Green, bleeding out and choked with dust. It would have been the one redemption of his miserable character to have died for a fatherless little girl, and for what it was worth in the grand scheme, he had been ready to do it.

But then, if her commitment to such a sorry, broken-down old bastard had been any indication, she hadn’t been quite so ready for their unhappy encounter to end. He couldn’t imagine why - he’d more than expended his usefulness, and was no more advantageous to her than the mercs they’d left on the Green. Perhaps less, as his wounds had not been lucky enough to kill him outright.

He burned with fever for cycles before they landed on Central, delirious and frequently unconscious. The foam kept him alive, but only just; he could feel it holding bits of him together, sticky and hot and unnatural. The pain was intolerable. In more lucid moments, he guessed the mercs had used the syrettes in the rock jumper’s med pack to get high, and there was nothing left for him to do but grit his teeth. He distinctly remembered how distraught his little bird had been, fluttering nervously around the cabin for something, _anything_ to ease his affliction. 

He tried his best to soothe her and to keep a hold of his senses, but control was a rare thing out in the vastness of space; she was frightened, tear-streaked and tightly wound, and there was little he could do to comfort her. He kept it together until he couldn’t, and if he was lucky, she fell into a restless sleep before he submitted to the fevered, painful tears that threatened every waking moment.

He hadn’t been conscious when they landed. He supposed Damon had done _some_ good in teaching her the landing sequence; otherwise, it would have been of little advantage to them to get off the Green just to crash flat into Central. Cee had confessed to him later, with the pale of guilt and distress, just how dire his situation had been: the medics had been doubtful he would make it off the transport to the hospital. By some miracle, or just his own damn stubbornness, he’d made it through surgery and been returned to Cee breathing and neatly bandaged.

Now, several tedious cycles later, he was finally starting to improve. The doctors often remarked on his expeditious recovery, and he wanted to say that he’d rather lose his other arm than leave Cee to a deathbed vigil. He’d recover if it killed him, if only to keep from being a burden on her any longer.

As it was, recovery vexed him something awful. He was a man of action; lying around had never suited him well. All his life, he’d never known more than a moment’s leisure: there was too much work to be done, too many debts to be paid. He’d tramped up and down the Green with a half-rotted arm, breathing in dust with every wheeze of his spent filter, tied to a nervous little girl with a thrower aimed at his back. To be in a clean, safe hospital, in _Central_ of all places, with nothing to do but rest? Ezra had never known such unimaginable luxury, and it grated on him. He needed something to _do._

But there was nothing for it. He could hardly sit on the edge of the bed without terrible swings of dizziness, and breath escaped him with the smallest aggravation. So he busied himself with worry - for Cee, for their future, for whether she wanted a future with him at all. 

He looked over at her, studying her face in the dim light. She looked even younger when she slept. He wondered again how her father could have justified bringing her to the Green, how he had rationalized taking such a little thing like her to that awful place. Ezra didn’t have children, had never had anyone to care for other than himself; but if he had, he would have done damn near _anything_ to keep them off the Green. He fervently hoped it was pure necessity that drove Damon to bring Cee there, but Ezra knew a prospector’s heart - aurelac was the _only_ thing that mattered, and greed for it drove men to terrible things. Violence, thieving, _killing._ Ezra knew that well enough, and he’d pay for indulgence in that same greed as long as he lived.

Cee, though. She needed better, _deserved_ better. The galaxy was wide open for her, and he would do whatever it took to allow her access to it. He’d already decided she should have his point collection, as paltry a sum as it was, but he was no stranger to the ways of the world. She was young still, a Floater, with no kin or place to call home. To go off on her own could be a death sentence, or worse. He knew what happened to Floaters like her; he’d _been_ a Floater like her, when he was younger, and would tear heaven and earth apart to keep her from the pain that had been inflicted on him in his youth.

He’d offered his protection, before. Flush with pain and dazed by medication, a thrower pistol held in unsteady hand towards him. Troubled even then with how easily she could be swallowed up by the vilest, most unsavory things. Mercs like those were a dime a dozen, lying in wait for a little bird to come flitting in before they devoured it.

He wanted to offer his protection again. He would stay by her side as long as she wanted him to. But, with all that had transpired between them, all the pain and hardship he’d brought her - he couldn’t blame her if she decided to leave him without a backwards glance. It surprised him, his grief, when he reconciled himself to that possibility - he knew with certainty that he would miss her and worry over her as long as they were apart, and he couldn't remember the last time he’d felt that way about anyone.

The monitor notified him of another release of painkillers, and he sighed when the drug flooded his system. He might have fallen asleep, lulled by the diminished pain and the woozy feeling in his head, but Cee started to stir.

“Ezra,” she said. Her voice was strained, thick with sleep. Like a half-muted warning through a faulty comms system, and it sent a thrill of agitation through him.

He sat up a little. “Right here, birdie.” 

She didn’t answer. He saw she hadn’t opened her eyes, and he grimaced. He’d wondered if she’d have nightmares. His sleep was too heavy with drugs to allow any night terrors yet, but he knew once he was sleeping on his own again they would set in with an unparalleled passion. That she was enduring them now spoke of the trauma that still weighed heavy on her, despite how well she seemed to cope while she was awake.

Her expression crumpled with fear as whatever night terror had a hold of her remained unwavering.

“Don’t take me,” she whimpered. He’d never heard her voice so tight with misery, and it felt like a deeper wound than any he’d suffered before.

He winced and pressed his arm over his stitches as he moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Without thinking, he tried to reach out to her with his right hand; the frayed nerve endings protested, sharply, and he gave a growl of frustration. _Damn_ his weak, useless body. He couldn’t do a single thing without an objection or outright refusal.

 _“Please,”_ she said quietly.

He moved his left hand towards her, gently gripped her shoulder and shook.

“Come on, birdie, wake up,” he coaxed, raising his voice a little. “Cee, it’s just a dream.”

She seemed to hear him. _“Ezra,”_ she said again. He had never heard his name called so pitifully.

“That’s right, little bird. Go on and wake up. I’m right here.”

He shook her gently, and that seemed to do the trick; her eyes flew open, pupils blown in the dark as she looked around for something familiar. 

“Ezra,” she said for a third time, voice ragged with panic and relief.

He withdrew his hand and hoped he hadn’t overstepped. “The very same.”

Then, before he could say anything else by way of comfort, she disentangled herself from her blankets and launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck in a bruising hug. His breath came in a slightly pained huff, aching and sore with the impact. It was a _good_ hurt, if there was such a thing. He was so stunned by the gesture he could only act on instinct, and like the warming of a tired old machine that hadn’t been used in years, he caught her against him and slowly put his arm around her.

“Easy, little bird,” he said. He splayed his hand over her back as she held him tighter; he felt her shoulders shake with quiet tears. 

“You’re alright,” he said gently. “I believe something gave you an awful fright while you slept.”

He felt her stiffen; not a moment later did she pull away from him, a brilliant blush over her cheeks visible even in the dim light. She hastily wiped the tears from her face and crossed her arms over her chest, defensive.

“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to - I hope I didn’t hurt you. That was stupid.”

He cleared his throat to fend off a cough. “You didn’t hurt me, birdie. Takes a lot more than that to lay me low, I assure you.”

She sat back on her cot, curling in on herself; she refused to meet his eyes. He hoped she wasn’t embarrassed by the way she’d acted; sometimes a body needed comfort, and was so keen to get it that little could be done to deny such a demand. He didn’t mind, and would not withhold any solace she was willing to take.

“It was just a silly dream,” she said. She _was_ embarrassed; he’d heard that color in his own voice too often to be unfamiliar with it in hers. He wondered how often she’d had nightmares before, and if they had ever been met with any kindness or sympathy.

“I’m afraid I must disagree with you, birdie.” He paused a beat to steady himself, to let the wave of dizziness pass. “Nothing so unsettling could rightly be counted ‘silly’.”

They sat in silence for a moment. It didn’t escape his notice how she continued to brush tears from her cheeks.

“It was the Sater,” she said finally.

He looked up and met her eyes. “Your nightmare?”

She nodded, pressed her hands to her face as if to hide behind them. She drew a hitching breath.

“Thank you for not giving me to them.”

He sighed. “Oh, birdie.”

He had told her the truth on the Green: he was never going to give her to them. He may not have been a virtuous man by any stretch of the imagination, but he could honestly say that he hadn’t considered _that,_ even for a moment. He’d never had problems with the Sater before; he wasn’t religious, but he was of no mind to deny any man whatever consolation he could find. Their proposal, though, a little girl in exchange for his healing - Ezra could have torn the whole place apart and still have not satisfied his wrath. Even now, he felt an acetous, clawing disgust that threatened to overwhelm him at the thought.

He’d placated them as best he could, and the words were bitter in his mouth. _I beg your forgiveness for the little one’s impertinence. She’s a nervous thing, fatherless. Allow me to search her out and bring her back to you._

They’d let him go, with the promise that he would be healed if the girl was returned. He didn’t know where Cee had gone, nor did he have any strength to go hunting for her; he’d barely made it back to camp with his spent filter and festering wound. As he set blade to skin, he sent a prayer up to no one - not for himself, but for the little bird in the woods, hoping she would find something or someone to help her find her way off the Green.

She looked less ragged now than she had looked then, stumbling into his tent, breathless, terrified. Food and clean clothes and sleep, even broken as it was by nightmares, had done wonders. And yet, she was still that little bird in the woods, and he was still the only thing she had in all the world. A pitiful hand to be dealt, certainly.

“No thanks required,” he said tiredly, weary with the weight of his culpability in her troubles. “Least I could do.”

Her expression clouded. _“He_ would have given me to them.”

It didn’t take much to guess who _he_ was, and Ezra was wary of stepping into this kind of territory, unsure what he should say or if he should say anything at all.

She twisted her fingers together, wrung them so her hurt would have somewhere to go.

 _“Dispensable,”_ she muttered. 

He frowned. Surely Damon hadn’t - 

“That’s what he called me, once,” she said. She looked up at him, defiant even as tears streaked her cheeks. “He was high, and I accidentally broke one of the rods for the thrower. _Make yourself indispensable,_ he said. _There’s barely enough room on this pod for me.”_

Ezra wished she would stop telling him things about her father. He felt his hatred towards a dead man, one he’d delivered the final blow to, wouldn’t do him any favors.

Cee shook her head and bit her lip; it did bleed, finally. Ezra raised himself from the bed with some difficulty and wet the corner of a washcloth in the refresher sink, then offered it to her. She looked up at him in confusion.

He nodded towards her. “Your lip’s bleeding, birdie.”

She took the washcloth and pressed it to her mouth, watching him with a careful gaze as he sat heavily on the edge of his bed again.

“You shouldn’t have gotten up,” she said.

His laugh was little more than a huff. “You are mighty keen on fretting, aren’t you?” He took a deep breath. “Mind you don’t worry that lip any more, or you’ll have a hard time getting on to me when I do something that’s not to your liking.”

She studied him like he might break apart at any moment. He felt like he might; the night’s activity was testing the limits of the pain medication.

“Are you sure I didn’t hurt you, earlier?”

He nodded. “Positive. And you know me to be an honest man, whenever possible.”

“Candid discourse,” she remembered.

He smiled. “Precisely. So I hope you won’t take offense when I tell you, honestly, that nightmares trouble every creature from time to time, and certainly trouble those who’ve spent any time on the Green.” He gave a few weak coughs. “There’s no shame in it, birdie.”

She twisted the washcloth around her fingers in her lap, the bleeding abated for the moment. “You have nightmares?”

“Indeed,” he said. He leaned heavily on his left hand to keep him upright. “And I will undoubtedly have many more before my time is up.” Such was the price of a life of violence, inflicted or endured.

“How do you... _deal_ with it?”

He gave a half-shrug; his right shoulder disliked being jostled, and he tried to keep its movement to a minimum.

“Not much to be done for it, I’m afraid,” he admitted. “Best not to be on your own. It’s hard to orient a mind consumed by fear without a helping hand.”

A precious few times in his life had he known someone he could call a friend, and it was only with them that he’d been able to soothe the nightmares that cropped up so often. A hand on his shoulder in the dark, a consoling word - that had made all the difference. He’d been without it more often than he’d had it, and sleep was a common point of contention between himself and his body. Usually he fell asleep when he was simply too exhausted not to, and he woke himself up, alone, in sweat and terror more often than not.

For the first time since he’d woken her, she looked a little less weary and upset.

“Good thing we’re not alone, then.”

Oh, but that eased his ills better than any dose of medication could have. He gave her a smile, pleased when she returned it with a small one of her own.

“Quite right, birdie,” he agreed. “It is a very good thing.”

She settled back against the wall, covering herself up in her blanket for a little warmth. They kept his room cool as the medication was liable to make him run hot, but he knew it was a little chilly for her liking. He reached over to grab the extra blanket from the foot of his bed and tossed it to her.

“The doctors should be in again, soon.” He looked at the clock and determined it was likely time for another one of his breathing treatments; his chest had begun to tighten again.

She pulled her notebook and a pen out of her bag. “I’m staying up this time.”

He gave a soft grunt as he lay back in bed. “Fine by me, birdie. Don’t...” He stopped for a breath. “Don’t worry about falling asleep again, if you need to. I’ll wake you if I fear there’s something amiss.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment; then, very softly, “thank you.”

He turned his head to look at her, buried under her blankets, her fictional world spread out in her lap as she tapped the end of the pen against the page.

“You’re welcome,” he said. He hoped she knew how much he meant it.

He closed his eyes and tried to come to terms with the dull, aching pain. “Read me a little something, birdie. If you’re not opposed.”

He heard her flip the pages in her notebook. “Just a little bit,” she said. “Not enough to give away the story.”

He hummed in agreement. “Just a little bit.”

He listened as she started to read, weaving stories about her favorite characters, her voice steady and relaxed as she sank into the world of her imagining. It _was_ a good thing they weren’t alone right now, and Ezra tried not to think of what it would be like to be alone again.


	3. Chapter 3

“Kevva help us, birdie. It’s even more frightful than I thought.”

Cee’s reflection was sympathetic in the refresher mirror, her gaze travelling over the new prosthetic arm that had been strapped on him five ways from Sunday. The straps and bandaging chafed against his chest, but he was assured that would fade with time. It wasn’t much to look at, just a hunk of flesh-colored plastic and a simple hook on the end, and he tried to get himself accustomed to the way it looked hanging from his shoulder.

“It’s not that bad,” she said. “You just... have to get used to it, that’s all.”

He frowned. “If you say so.”

He’d never considered himself a vain man. He was popular enough with the ladies at the various dive bars he frequented whenever he was planetside - for some reason utterly unknown to him, they seemed particularly allured to the streak of blonde in his otherwise dark hair, a prize gained from a spray of fazer solution from a clumsy-handed fellow prospector. But he’d never concerned himself with his looks; underneath a flight suit and a helmet, looks tended not to be of any great importance.

 _This_ thing, though... He knew it was foolish to be troubled over how his prosthetic _looked -_ it was far more important that it functioned, that it allowed him some independence and ability now that his arm was gone. He was infinitely more hireable with a working prosthetic than he was without it, and he willed himself to think of _that_ as he looked at himself in the mirror.

He snapped the arm up and locked the elbow joint into place, wincing a little at the unfamiliar movement. His muscles still protested even after all the cycles of physical therapy he’d endured - more from Cee’s bidding than any desire to do it on his own - and the weight of his prosthesis felt awkward, resting at a ninety-degree angle against his ribs. Under the green scrubs he’d been given in replacement for his dirty, tattered clothes - just as Cee had - the straps rubbed against his skin; he fussed with the spot roughly for a few seconds before Cee batted his hand away.

“The doctor told you not to do that,” she reminded him. “You’ll irritate your skin.”

“Not nearly as much as it’s irritating me,” he grumbled. He turned the lights out in the refresher and started to pace around the room, the same room he’d been boxed into for weeks on end; he felt unbalanced with the weight of his prosthesis, an entirely disagreeable sensation. He wondered how he could have gotten accustomed to having one arm so quickly, and why it was so maddening to have that weight back now.

Confounded, pestiferous thing. He’d never felt this sort of vexation at his own body before, and it took hold of him with a sudden ferocity. He was still raw with the _grief_ of it, the fear and despondency of having lost his primary weapon, but never had he been so _irate_ with the loss. He supposed he hadn’t had time for it, until now - he’d been healing, and there hadn’t been much he couldn't do because there wasn’t much he _could_ do. Now, all he could think of were the things he’d need two hands for - not one weak hand and a metal hook.

He ran his hand through his hair. How would he find suitable occupation? How could he deliver on his promise to protect Cee, weak-handed as he was? What if he _couldn’t?_ How were the two of them - such an unlikely, ungainly pair as they were - _ever_ going to make their way in the galaxy once they left this hospital?

“Ezra?”

Her voice pulled him out of his feverish brooding, stilled his irascible pacing. He frowned at her.

“What?”

She didn’t say anything, just _watched_ him, and he felt a flare of aggravation.

“Kevva waits, girl - speak your mind or leave me be.”

She flinched at his words, the same rebuke he’d used to spur her into action after he’d tried to take her pod and gotten shot for his trouble. He instantly felt a wave of guilt and softened towards her.

“Sorry,” she said quietly, before he could apologize first. It sounded as reflexive as it did heartfelt, and he wondered how many times her father’s words had elicited such a reaction.

“No, birdie,” he said, abashed and much gentler. He knew what she looked like when he frightened her, and she was closer to it now than he ever wanted to make her again.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” he told her. “My temper got away from me for a moment. Forgive me for speaking to you so harshly. I wholeheartedly apologize.”

She looked surprised. “Thank you,” she said uncertainly, like she’d never been on the receiving end of an apology in her life.

When she didn’t say anything else, he hoped a little prompting wouldn’t offend her.

“What did you want to say?” he asked. “You have my undivided attention, I assure you.”

She shook her head. “I was just going say we could go out to the garden, but it was a stupid idea. I shouldn’t have...”

She trailed off, and he gave a wry, sympathetic smile.

“What, interrupted my conceited rumination?” he supplied. “No, birdie, you _should_ have done that. And I’d be obliged to you for any time you attempt it, should I tend towards such a useless activity in future.”

She looked more relaxed then, and her look mixed exasperation with a fondness he couldn’t help but take pride in.

“You talk _way_ too much.”

He chuckled. “You’re likely right.” He scrubbed his fingers over the strap against his chest only for a moment before her disapproving look stopped him again.

“Let’s go to the garden, then,” he said. “Maybe the sunshine will put things in a better light.”

She smiled. “Let me grab my notebook.”

Though she’d brought it with her, presumably in hopes that she would feel inspired to write, Cee left her notebook next to Ezra on the bench where he sat with his face to the sun. He’d missed the feel of light and air on his face; it had been many cycles since he’d last enjoyed it. 

He recalled very clearly the first time he’d been in a flight suit and helmet: his first trip to the Green, when the rush was in full swing. He’d been young, cocky, attempting to grab hold of a life of riches so advertised by every major corporation hungry for some poor bastard to harvest aurelec for them. They fitted him with a too-small flight suit - probably, though he hadn’t known it at the time, from some newly-dead prospector. He would never forget the _fear_ that seized him, being constricted in that thing: he’d pleaded and pleaded to be taken out of it, but they were already on the Green. He had made quite an impression that day, the young, tearful prospector who couldn’t quite catch his breath, whose hands shook so badly he busted every other pull.

It had taken a good, long wrestle with shame and bitterness for Ezra to overcome that bit of his career, that wound to his youthful, fragile sense of his own manhood. He’d long since forgiven himself for it; the Green had taught him that fear was fear, no matter how old or how strong you got. Now he wore a flight suit and helmet that were a little too big and more clumsy than not, and even then, he still tussled with that same fear from time to time. He remembered how badly it had bothered him that Cee kept her helmet on in his tent, how he’d growled at her to take it off before it sent _him_ into a nervous spin. 

Out in the garden, Ezra took a deep, hungry breath of fresh air. City air, but tempered by the flora that took up every available space on the rooftop. Cee was looking over the balcony, a birds-eye view of the city more beguiling than the greenery; the railing was too high for her to topple over, but he still felt a brief streak of anxiety watching her lean over it to look below. Strange, considering all they’d been through together; she would have laughed had she known.

“Come look,” she called. “You can see everything from up here.”

“I have no doubt,” he answered. “But I’ll leave you to it, birdie. I fear it would be too vertiginous an experience for my taste.”

She turned and looked at him, her expression scrunched in confusion. “Vertiginous?”

He chuckled. “It would make me dizzy,” he clarified. “Too high up.”

She rolled her eyes, but her expression was something close to affectionate. He smiled. He was determined to charm her with his loquacious disposition, and he was pleased to have been more frequently rewarded with amusement than annoyance in recent cycles.

“Tell me what you see, little bird.” He pressed his fingers over the edge of the prosthesis; though warned it would ache, he found himself disgruntled by the feeling. “Any trouble worth getting into?”

She looked over the railing again. “I dunno. There’s an awful lot of people. I wonder where they’re going.”

“Hm. The industrious, tireless occupations of city folk,” he mused. Nothing he would have enjoyed nor been very good at, if memory served. He’d tried to get out of the prospecting business before, but for better or worse, his skill set was of precious little use to a desk job.

“Maybe some of them are students,” she supplied. He noticed the pitch of hopefulness in her voice, the color of interest.

“Maybe,” he agreed. Likely not with lives as exciting as the students in her novel, but students all the same.

He wanted to ask what she thought of being a student, if the thought had ever crossed her mind. He knew with certainty that it had, as he could hardly imagine her being so consumed with the characters in her book and not picturing herself in the same circumstances. But she had never mentioned it; he thought it may not be a topic of conversation she wanted to broach with him, and he wouldn't begrudge her any privacy.

But, then again, maybe she’d just been waiting for the right moment.

“I wonder what it would be like to be a student,” she said. Her voice was quieter and she still watched the people below; he listened more carefully to be able to catch what she said.

“My mother went to school,” she said. “Not Bowsum Conservatory, just this small university on Kamrea, but she always talked about how much she loved it.”

Ezra didn’t say anything; he knew how valuable this little bit of her history was, and he was more than honored to be invited to treasure it with her. He gave her a gentle, encouraging smile when she turned around to face him, and was pleased when she returned it.

“I want to go to school, someday,” she said. It was more hopeful and confident than any desire she had expressed to him thus far, and he felt an overwhelming urge to make sure it stayed so, unweighted by practicality or circumstance or any worldly obstacle.

“Okay,” he agreed.

She raised a brow. “Just like that?”

His smile was a little heart-heavy. She was no stranger to the things that stood between a Floater and a life doing anything but skimming the boards for low-paying, risky jobs. Likely her father had made it abundantly clear that no life other than the one he led was in the cards for her.

“Just like that,” he assured her. He felt a bit lightheaded and muffled a few coughs in his fist, but ignored them in favor of keeping hold of the possibly tenuous thread of their conversation. He wanted to make the most of this opportunity to convince her that whatever she wanted for her future, he would help her to get.

She frowned. “I dunno. I don’t have any...” She shook her head. “I probably wouldn’t even get in.”

“Now, none of that,” he chided gently. “You’re whip-smart, birdie, and that’s truly saying something coming from me.”

She laughed, and he was pleased his little joke had worked. He tried to laugh with her but found himself short of breath and settled for a huff.

“When we get out of this... hospital,” he wheezed, “we’ll start thinkin’ on it, alright? Between the two of us... surely we can come up with... a plan to get you into university.”

He hadn’t had that much trouble talking since that wretched ventilator tube from surgery had come out. He tried to suck in a breath and started coughing, badly, each breath rattling in his chest. Cee noticed his floundering and raced over to him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Can you breathe?”

He rubbed his chest and managed a strained, shallow breath through the tightness and pain that settled in with a frightening quickness.

“Chest feels...” He couldn’t quite think of a creative comparison, and left it up to his quiet groan to relay the message.

“We need to get you inside,” she said, her voice panicked. 

“Easy,” he said, taking one of her hands to quit their nervous fluttering around him. She held on tight and studied his face.

“Let me catch my breath,” he managed, though he feared it was only a matter of time before his lungs started to try and come up his throat again. 

“We need a doctor,” she insisted. “You’re pale as a ghost.”

He almost chuckled. He wondered where she’d heard that saying; the only things that mentioned ghosts these days were very old books and deeply spiritual types.

“Fine, but let’s... meet them downstairs, alright?” he said. “No use stirring up the whole hospital.”

Maybe it was the way he’d managed to get through a whole sentence without wheezing, or maybe she was just as keen as he was to pretend there was nothing amiss, but she nodded. He let her help him to stand, and was about to open his mouth to deliver some remark on her tendency towards worrying when he felt a clear, unalterable sense of something deeply _wrong._

“Birdie,” he managed.

She looked up at him. “What?”

He felt like his head was full of Green dust, every sense distorted. Everything swung around him in a carousel of colors. He didn’t know if he was upright or not, and couldn’t feel the squeeze of Cee’s hand.

“I believe you were right to bring to attention our need for a doctor.” His voice sounded completely separate from him, _unlike_ him, and it made him frightened.

“Ezra?” His little bird, terrified again on his account. He really had to stop doing that to her. “Ezra!”

His vision went as he careened in some indiscernible direction. He heard Cee’s frightened cry, and hoped he would lose consciousness before his head hit the ground.


	4. Chapter 4

He was home again.

It was night, and a set of stars he hadn’t seen since he was a boy glinted back at him, brighter than he remembered them. The breeze swept through the hip-high grass, luring the pink wild onion and golden switchgrass into a shared melody; he could hear a longspur’s call of  _ kityoo-trick-kityoo  _ over the trilling of crickets. He took a deep breath, deeper than he’d managed in a long time; the clean air filled his lungs until he thought his chest would burst with it.

“Ezra!”

He knew that voice. The song of a little bird more flighty than the rest, calling out to him with more intention, like it  _ needed  _ something from him. It sounded out of place here, where everything was peaceful and nothing was required of him. He could have stayed in the tall grass and watched the stars forever, breathing deeply of that warm summer air. But his heart was tied to that little bird’s song, and the thread that kept them together was tugged,  _ sharply,  _ on the other end. He could no more keep from following it than he could stop the stars from shining.

“Cee,” he called out, wading through the tall grass. His voice sounded wrong, and he tried it again. “Cee!”

She didn’t answer, but he  _ felt  _ her, somehow; he gracelessly stomped through the grass and searched for her. He winced with pain. His whole body felt weary, an angry, grueling weariness he feared he would never truly be rid of. He followed the sharp tug of her call towards the treeline, and a darkness much heavier seemed to shroud the woods he walked towards.

He knew what those woods were. He’d spent too many cycles there for him not to know. He’d be damned before he went back there again.

He stopped walking, stood stock-still in the middle of the field. She called his name again, and it was weaker, lost in the rustling of the grass against his body.

“Come here, little bird,” he said. “Don’t make me come looking for you. I fear we cannot survive another pilgrimage to the Green, you and me.”

He knew she was tugging him towards it, towards that mangled, deathly forest where each breath was its own small struggle and victory. Where wounds ached and sorrows gnawed. Where the only consolation to be found was a small, trembling hand in his.

“Stay with me,” he said gently, hoping to ease her out of the forest she seemed so keen to draw him back into. “We’ll be happy here, birdie. We’ll get along just fine.”

He felt that sharp tug again, then the ghost of a touch over his left-hand knuckles.

“I didn’t leave you,” she said. Her voice was desperate, tear-stained. “I didn’t leave you, and you better not leave me. Don’t leave me here alone.”

_ Ah. _ He realized what the trouble was. She was lost in those woods, tangled up somewhere he’d have to fish her out of. Somewhere she needed help. Somewhere she shouldn’t be alone.

He bolstered his courage. He wanted to stay here, more than anything - the stars and the summer breeze called to him like a siren’s song. He needed  _ rest,  _ a whole lifetime’s worth. Would he get that in the Green?

No. Most certainly, he’d not get a chance to rest like this again in many years. There was work to be done, and a little bird caught in a thicket that needed his help mending her wings. A one-armed grifter with pretty words wasn’t what she was owed, that much he knew for sure, but she’d asked for him. Called for him by name, and he wasn’t going to leave her when she needed him.

“I’m coming, birdie,” he said, and his voice sounded a little stronger. He followed that now-familiar tug and felt her touch grow steadier on his hand, taking him back into the Green once more.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, come see me on my tumblr, @javi-djarins ♡


End file.
